ctr22, have you been to Spain? Spain has a huge diversity of climates and most of Spain is definitely not coastal.
Another obvious link is in the culture, the traditional building styles, the missions, etc.
The population of Spain is also comparable: 40 million.
Create your own Minnesota (two “n”s by the way)
1)Take an area the size of England, Scotland and Wales.
Import temperatures from Mongolia (or Russia if we must stick to a Euro theme)
Use Germans and Scandinavians to create a population base. Apply liberal doses of Laotians, Somalians and other Africans, Irish, Italians, Mexicans and pretty much everything else and viola!
Although California, as a whole, may resemble Spain, San Francisco reminds me of Amsterdam (except for the canals – does the Bay count?)
A musical instrument! 
Umm, jjimm, you won’t really need me to point out that Europe and the EU are not synonymous. The continent of Europe has a lot more than 35% more people than the US. Even once the EU’s population goes up to, what, 450m? there will still be about 50m Ukrainians and 100m European Russians.
To compare the US with Europe, both have around 50 states / countries now. The US only has about 4 with more than 20m people, and none with 50m. Europe has about 9 countries with 40m+. Also the US has far more states with fewer than 1m people.
Actually, maybe 8 countries with 40m+; I thought Romania had a bigger population than it does. Although if you count Turkey as Europe (which people did before 1922)…
To actually answer the OP, I agree with jjimm about the Highlands of Scotland being like the remote West of the US, especially when you go to the vast (by UK standards) treeless areas in the far north of Scotland. You get small but dramatic ancient mountains rising suddenly from an endless plain of heather or yellow grass and it feels so very remote.
It’s my understanding that the climate of the Pacific Northwest and England are reasonably similar (at least, the part of the Pacific NW that is west of the Cascades). Mild summers, wet and overcast winters.
So for me, Oregon – England.
Yeah, I spotted that the moment I posted it - but I hoped nobody would notice. And I’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for your meddling!
This should be in IMHO.
I am from California, and I would vote for Italy as closest to Europe. Tuscany is very similar to where I grew up, in Northern California. Lots of vineyards, too. I think Italy has more extreme temperatures, though - it snowed when I was in Rome, and no one paid it any mind. It does, very very very occasionally, snow on the California coast, but people would have been gasping in astonishment. I was obviously there in the winter, but I think it gets hotter in Italy in the summer than it does in California. I haven’t been to Spain, so I don’t really have an opinion there. California is a very large place and has such varied topography and geology that I imagine that it could imitate some portion of pretty much any country in Europe. I said Italy because it reminded me of Sonoma County.
As for Michigan, I haven’t been anywhere in Europe that looks very much like it does here. I haven’t seen much of Michigan, but what I have seen is pretty nondescript. I know there are a lot of beautiful places Up North, though.
I’ve spent many hours on rainswept motorways going north through Belgium and northern France to the coast; as flat as a pancake, passing one industrial town after another. When driving through Indiana to Chicago, that felt pretty similar. Also, the only places where I’ve seen industry that looked truly Stalinist in its heaviness were south Chicago and Liege in Belgium.
I felt rural Pennsylvania was very like Southern Germany, in both the green pretty fields and the forested mountains, which are roughly the same height as the Jura.
With its undulating, lightly wooded dairy country and cooler climate, I felt Wisconsin was a bit like Britain.
I don’t know what the US equivalent of Stenhousmuir is, though. Or Basingstoke.
Going a little further afield, southern Finland and central Sweden is the splitting image of central Ontario. I include here Algonquin Park, Muskoka, and all the “Canadian Shield” country from the Thousand Islands across north of Lakes Huron and Superior to Thunder Bay and Rainy River. Climate, landforms, general form of the vegetation… I was astonished by this; I’d thought that the Shield country was unique in the world.
Off to IMHO
ctr22, it would be interesting to see size-wise how large Califorinia and Italy both are, and thus compare the relative population density of both. We would need the area in square km. Anyone wanna do the math?
California: 411,014 square km
Italy: 301, 049 square km
(off the top of my head, of course). Clearly Italy is more densely populated, but the difference in population density is nothing compared with that between say, Texas and the UK.
California has a pop. density of 318.65 per sq. km.
Italy has a pop. density of 798.23 per sq. km.
Like I said not close population-wise.
Just amend my first post to California being unlike any one European state.
I agree with Kyla about the varied topography.
And sorry sailor, I haven’t been to Spain and the more I search about Spain’s climate the more I see you are absolutely right.
Regarding culture I wouldn’t compare the two because each place has too many different cultures to compare, both Spain and California have many different languages and ethnicities.
I’m going to hell for this…
Texas = (France - culture) x 2arrogance
(Florida / Castro) = ( Italy / Mussolini ) - youth
((Tennessee - Nashville) - Anheuser Busch) + real beer = (Czechoslovakia - Communists)
|New Jersey| = The Netherlands
Detroit - Eminem = Sarajevo
Washington DC = Vatican City - God / partisans
…adding to Sofa’s equations…
California = Spain + loonies
Hawaii = Iceland + MUCH nicer weather
(Alaska/100) = Lapland
I don’t get it. People don’t use Canadian money in California.
